After Akbelen Forest, trees this time will be cut in Bergama for solar power plant

Cihan Başakçıoğlu / Gazete Duvar

The municipality of Bergama district in the Aegean İzmir province, from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has announced that it will on Aug. 18 hold a tender for the cutting of 283 trees for the establishment of a solar power plant.

The firm that wins the tender will remove the trees off a 45,000-square-meter land. Among the trees that will be cut are those that are hundreds of years old. The announcement of the tender described the job as follows, “Trees and shrubs will be cut, their roots will be ripped off, the root holes that will be formed will be filled in, and all the materials will be removed off the field.”

The total cost of the tender has been announced as 86,902 Turkish Liras, which corresponds to 307 liras per tree.  

Bergama Environment Platform, which has been giving a fight against the establishment of the relevant solar power plant, slammed the planned tender and said that this recent example, along with what is happening in the Akbelen Forest, shows the existence of “a serious pillage in the Aegean.”

The platform’s spokesperson Erol Engel said that former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım’s son is among the co-owners of the firm which will build the solar power plant in the region.

“Together with the locals, we will continue our struggle against the project that attempts to create a ‘new Akbelen’ in Bergama as well as this destruction imposed by the (presidential) palace system and its local managements,” he said.